


Rain Shadow

by TrisB



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Community: where_no_woman, F/M, Gen, Vulcan esoterica
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-21
Updated: 2009-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-03 13:02:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrisB/pseuds/TrisB
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amanda studies philosophy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rain Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt "ride my decision into the night."

Amanda grows in the human city called Seattle, in the lee of the Olympic Mountains.

Her father broke faith with his family some time ago; her mother is of Ashkenazi descent, but she is not observant. Then none of them were. Amanda has seen her cousins at awkward events, the young girls all in skirts, the married women in wigs to keep their real hair a gift for their bonded ones alone; their husbands and God. Amanda tries to understand the life and the words, but her father says religion is useless. He says now that the world is so much bigger than during the age of the book, there are too many quantifiable things to learn about to spend time dwelling on what can never be understood. Her mother says faith is complicated, and blinding.

Amanda studies philosophy.

In graduate school she meets a guest speaker at her seminar. He speaks of the Kir'shara, vessel of wakeful tidings. He says, "Only one human has ever touched it." He says, "It is my privilege to convey the teachings of Surak to Earth, as it is my privilege to represent all aspects of Vulcan culture to your people." He says, "I can show you," and their first wedding is performed by Amanda's cousin, the rabbi, on the shore of Puget Sound.

⁂

Amanda lives in the Vulcan city called Shi'Kahr, in the lee of the L-langon Mountains. In some stretched-out seasons it feels like nothing so much as a crucible — gravity's ominous pull and the heat of the Forge pressing on her from above and below, a law of chemistry her father wouldn't believe she still knows. Long sleeves and stiff fabrics at this point seem like a test, and Amanda returns to her studies, waiting out the discomfort.

She is the second human ever to lay hands on the original Kir'shara. Sarek sees to that. She thinks he thought that if she read the teachings of Surak on her own, she would agree with all they said. She laughs at this and reminds him how they met. On her wall she mounts the ketubah that was her aunt's wedding gift, her parents' signatures bearing shaky witness to the marriage of Amanda and Sarek, illustrated with a painting of two trees whose roots intertwine. She sees her son's struggle to prove himself to the Vulcan children, and covers her ears in solidarity, finding that wearing a hood for love is no great sacrifice after all. She reads to him books from her childhood, rainy nonsense about boiling seas, and she can only hope he might one day understand.

On her terrace, under a strange sun, Amanda tends to her garden.

**Author's Note:**

> I always wonder why Amanda wears what she does on Vulcan; she is covered up head to toe in a desert, hooded when nobody else is. I wonder at what she does when she is considered a human whore in a strange land, and when I see a glimpse of potted plants on her terrace, I think I see a glimpse of the woman underneath.
> 
> The decision to make Amanda Jewish is an easy, obvious one: the character of Spock was very much shaped by Leonard Nimoy's Judaism; if anything the movie belabors the Vulcan = Space Jews analogue; and Winona Ryder herself is Jewish. But I wasn't trying to make the point that Vulcans are just like Jews (analogies only go so far); rather, simply give her a history that felt real and resonated in her latter life. A [ketubah](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketubah) is a decorative Jewish marriage contract; the first one I saw ended with the promise, "together we will make our lives one sweet song." Every other non-English word is Vulcan mined from Memory Alpha and applied as accurately as I could.
> 
> I found a reference to Amanda's love of Lewis Carroll and somehow [The Walrus and the Carpenter](http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/walrus.html) worked its way in almost without me noticing. I am sure Amanda herself is quite aware of what it is to [tend to one's garden](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide), no matter the world.
> 
> I wrote this because I was furious, to be honest; I had just read that Amanda's stepson Sybock was born to Sarek and "a Vulcan princess." I am beyond tired of women with no names, nothing to them but meaningless royalty or meaningful deaths. Just as some religious women today and of the future may reclaim the headcovering as a feminist statement, I am reclaiming the namelessness, the shallow tragedies. Every damn woman is worth a story, worth as many stories as the men who have starred in fiction since it first existed. I hope to give that Vulcan princess some time of her own soon, but until, this is what I have to give.
> 
> ([Definition of title](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_shadow).)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Through the Open Door](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18431) by [glamaphonic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glamaphonic/pseuds/glamaphonic)
  * [[Podfic] The Not-Valentine's Itty-Bitty Podfic Anthology 2](https://archiveofourown.org/works/679236) by [fire_juggler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fire_juggler/pseuds/fire_juggler)




End file.
